Thomas Shelby, May Carleton, and a Conversation About Shovels
by Tormentas
Summary: Thomas Shelby never really left France. The real Tommy was hidden away under mud and smoke and blood, but for all that Thomas tries to keep him down, the real Tommy crawls to the surface.


**All characters belong to the creators of Peaky Blinders. **

**Just an idea floating around that I had to get out. Tommy's dreams faded away with Grace, but what happen about when he's with May? Presumably they would keep tormenting him. A look at a particularly bad dream.**

* * *

><p><em>Thomas Shelby, May Carleton, and a conversation about shovels<em>

It was an hour past four when she felt Thomas leave the bed. It wasn't much of a surprise. He hadn't seemed the sort of man to stay after the fact. She waited, in the dark, listening to Thomas shuffling around in the dark. Then, after perhaps half an hour of scratching and shuffling, she heard a voice.

"They're coming through."

At first she was certain there were three people in the room. The voice was barely a whisper, but with an unmistakeable tone of hoarse and wild terror.

"Thomas?"

"They're coming through." The voice was louder now, and the terror in it was palpable.

"Thomas?" May asked again. Her voice shook.

"They're coming through!" There was no mistaking Thomas Shelby's shout. He sounded out of his mind, his voice cracked between a scream and a laugh.

May hurriedly reached for the lamp at the bedside. The small light sparked into life, revealing Thomas Shelby, naked and shaking, soaked with sweat, staring wild eyed at the bedroom wall, a revolver in his hands. The light must have caught his attention, for he jerked to his feet, the barrel of his pistol leveled directly at the source of the light.

May stared at Thomas. Thomas stared straight through May, into a personal monster beyond.

"Thomas?" May couldn't hide the fear in her voice. Thomas Shelby was quite clearly mad, and the hand that gripped his pistol shook violently. "Thomas, it's me."

She shifted slowly to the left, and to her immense relief, the barrel didn't follow her, remaining transfixed on the light.

"Bastards." Thomas hissed through his teeth. "Bastards, bastards, bastards!"

His lips were curled back, teeth bared in a feral snarl. The cold handsome face was contorted into something bestial, primal, horrifying. The pistol shook more and more violently. Icy blue eyes rolled in their sockets.

"Thomas?" May swallowed hard, and reached out tentatively. Thomas didn't react to her movements, and she pressed on, placing her hands on his pistol. Her scream was muffled by a hand that seized her mouth in an iron grip. She was slammed, bodily, into the floor, the icy barrel of the revolver pressed painfully into her neck.

"You bastard." Thomas Shelby growled. "You fucking Hun bastard!"

"Thomas!" May cried, gasping desperately through Thomas's fingers.

The man's whole body recoiled, so suddenly his hand half pulled her with him before it let go.

"Oh god..." Thomas Shelby sat on the floor, staring at May Carleton, his eyes wide, not with fear, but horror. "Oh god..."

"Thomas?"

"Oh god." Thomas's eyes flickered from her to the gun in his hands and back to her. "Oh god." He hurled the gun away. The pistol thudded loudly against the bedframe. He gripped his head in his hands, and made a strange sound.

"Thomas?" He was almost a different man, shivering in the half light, curled in on himself. The charming man with a mocking smile and quick wit, and the wild eyed madman with bared teeth and violence in his eyes had vanished. May shuffled forwards, putting an hand gingerly on his arm. He recoiled, as if burned. She could see tears streaming down his face, eyes staring at nothing.

"Thomas."

She reached for him again, placing two hands on his shaking ones.

"Thomas, look at me."

"Oh god." He looked at her. "Have to get back." His voice trembled. "Back to the line. The charges...the charges..."

"Thomas, what charges? Look at me?" May put a hand on his cheek, but he pulled away.

"The charges...buried! We'll be buried!" His voice rose, and he tried to push her away. "Oh god."

He was hallucinating, she realized. In his mind, Thomas Shelby was down in the tunnels beneath France, struggling in the dark. May slapped him, hard. His head rocked to one side, and for a second she was sure he would kill her. But instead, she saw the madness fade from his face.

"May?" Thomas's voice was soft. "May?"

"Thomas? She reached for him. "Are you alright?"

"Fuck...bloody hell." He gingerly lifted her hand from his face. "May...oh god."

"You didn't hurt me Thomas." She pulled him towards her. He didn't resist. "Thomas?"

"I could hear the shovels May. I could fucking hear them!" He sobbed, a heart wrenching sound May would not have believed he could make. "Shoveling in the fucking dark!" He sobbed again.

"There are no shovels Thomas." May stroked his forehead. "You're home Thomas, your'e in England."

"Oh god..." Thomas took a deep breath. "Oh god May." he looked up into her face. " I hurt you." He started to pull away. "I didn't..."

"Thomas!" She pulled him back. "Thomas, it's alright, really." She stood, and pulled on his shaking arm. "Come on, up you get."

He stood, unsteady, but upright. "Oh god."

"Sit here." She guided him back to the bed. "You're alright Thomas."

He pat her hand, and she caught a flash of red. Two of the fingernails on his hand were gone.

"Good lord Thomas, your hand!"

"What?" He looked down. "Oh." His face was blank. "Must've ruined your wall." He looked up at her. "Sorry."

"Damn my wall. Let me see your other hand." He presented it, and she saw three more bloody tears where nails should be.

"Oh Thomas." He looked so unlike himself now, lost and alone.

"It's the same dream every night." He murmured. "Every night I'm down in the tunnels. Every night I hear shovels in the walls." He shivered. "Never been this bad though."

"Shovels?" She wrapped herself in a robe, and pulled a sheet over his shoulders.

"German tunnelers. They came through into our tunnel by accident." He choked up a short laugh. "Poor bastards."

"What happened?" She knelt in front of him, holding his mangled hands in her own.

"We killed them all. We were setting charges to blow away a section of enemy trench away for an advance. We killed them and left them in the dark."

He had served with the 179th Tunnelers. She remembered reading in the papers about an explosion that had buried that regiment alive.

"The charges buried us in with them." Thomas continued. "We used shovels, their shovels, and when those wore out...we used our hands. We dug out way out."

May shivered involuntarily.

"I'm sorry." She couldn't think of anything else to say. She couldn't imagine reliving something like that. Buried alive, again and again, every night.

He laughed wryly. "Not your fault eh? I'm sorry I woke you."

"I'm rather glad you did. Saved me from having a rather large hole in my wall."

He half smiled. "Imagine what the maids would say."

"Oh god!" She laughed aloud. "A strange man is bad enough! A gunshot, oh the scandal!"

He smiled this time, a full smile.

"Well we wouldn't want that now would we?"


End file.
